An Iranian national has pleaded guilty in US federal court to extorting millions of dollars from cities, businesses and healthcare organizations, the Justice Department announced May 27.
One of the biggest losses was to Baltimore, Maryland, which reported it lost $19 mil lion.
Sina Gholinejad, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of computer fraud and abuse and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison when he is sentenced in August by the US District Court for Eastern North Carolina in Wilmington.
According to court documents and statements made in court, beginning in 2019, Gholinejad and his co-conspira tors compromised the computer networks of cities and businesses by encrypting their files with the Robin Hood ransomware variant to extort ransom payments.
Publicly available court records do not allege any involvement by the Islamic Republic. It appears to be a purely criminal case.
Officials said the cyber attacks caused significant disruptions and millions of dollars in losses to the cities of Greenville, North Carolina, Gresham, Oregon, and Yonkers, New York, as well as Baltimore.
Authorities said the city of Baltimore lost more than $19 million from the damage caused to its computer networks and the disruption it caused to several city services, including online services for processing property taxes, water bills, parking citations, and other revenue-generating functions. This outage lasted for several months.
Officials said the hackers used the damage they caused these cities to threaten other victims, and extorted Bitcoin in exchange for the private key required to decrypt the computer files.
The Justice Department said all of Gholinejad’s co-conspirators were located overseas, but it did not name them or say where they were located. Gholinejad was arrested January 10, 2025, at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, according to federal court records.
